THOUGH all aberration, moral as well as speculative, is combined with imperfect perceptions, it does not follow, as some might insinuate, that there would be as much virtue in the world as knowledge; but that, in any particular case, virtue would be ensured by a vivid and comprehensive discernment of the truth relating to the subject: an accomplishment rare enough to explain any seeming exceptions to the remark. "Certain it is," says Lord Bacon, "that veritas and bonitas differ but as the seal and the print for truth prints goodness; and they be the clouds of error, which descend in the storms of passions and perturbations." Illumination, without that specific kind or branch of it which constitutes the key to practice, is like an acquaintance with chemistry to one who needs the science of architecture; or as a person who has never seen a watch may discover, on inspection, a number of things regarding the structure and movements, but, not discerning the principle, or the spring that communicates motion, would have no mechanical mastery of the instrument.

WARMTH of blood may suit a sportive or exuberant fancy, but coldness of temperament is not essential to correct judgment. Persons of the most vivacious and impassioned genius have sometimes the greatest perspicacity and discrimination; while minds of a stoical order are in numberless instances overrun with error. What vehemence and fire pervade the eloquent effusions of Burke! though without any dearth of profound accurate reflection. In the writings. of multitudes, frigidity is at least as conspicuous as absurdity. The notion that ardour is incompatible with soundness of apprehension, has no more foundation in philosophy than in fact; and seems to belong, in its primary source, to the class of prejudices which Bacon denominates idola specús, or those dependent on individual peculiarities; a category perhaps the most comprehensive of all.

A PENETRATING judgment, unless combined with a stoical heart, is sometimes fatal to the repose of its possessor; for, like the gifted Cassandra, it is destined to see things to which others are blind or incredulous, and often therefore occasions unpleasing collision with prevalent sentiments and admiration. The discoveries which it yields, however, ought surely to countervail these transient irritations of feeling. Though we should sound the depths of ocean, or explore the illimitable tracts of space, in quest of that fair and good which imagination delights to picture, and of which philosophers have fondly dreamed; yet not in material nature, or the conventional idols of opinion, is the vision to be realised, but only in the silence and calm of a purified and introspective spirit. Truth, whom all profess to worship, but who, like other divinities, is often invoked the most loudly by her pretended adorers, disdains the masquerade in which the crowd are wont to array her; and, fleeing from party, and aggregations of men, establishes her shrine in the breast of a few solitary thinkers.

RETENTION AND REMINISCENCE.

T is not with the mind as with cabinets of art, which are of limited dimensions, and can admit only a

certain number of curiosities. In proportion to the multiplicity of ideas is the capacity for still farther augmentation. The more truths the understanding accumulates, the easier is their retention; for as memory depends on association, an increase of attainments supplies so many additional links of connexion; so that mental acquisitions are susceptible of indefinite enlargement. It will commonly be found that paucity of ideas is combined with feebleness of memory, and that he who possesses the least knowledge has the worst retention.

As people in later times may be considered the ancients of the world, the effect is analogous to the imaginary case of living throughout the series of vanished ages. Yet how little would such an experience of the past, supposing it possible, assist in the regulation of present conduct! How superfluous would be the greater number of the particulars accumulated! A similar redundance of ideas may be possessed in relation to prior events, which are rarely of much service in the management of actual circumstances. A slight intermixture with men and things will afford more practical wisdom than the collective facts of all history; which, instead of being, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus

represents, philosophy teaching by example, is too often but the record, more or less varied as the changes on a peal of bells, of might against right.

IT is in the very nature of mind to enlarge its possessions, nor can we imagine any limits to its progress in knowledge. The memory of some, however, though not exactly like that of the rustic gentleman in Aristophanes, who forgot things before he had learnt them, is so little tenacious, that continued application produces rather a change than an augmentation of ideas.

THE scenes and incidents of history and poetry fade from remembrance, as the objects and brightness of a landscape disappear when the shadows of the evening descend. The realities of life, no less than the pictures of fancy, leave but a transient impression behind; so that after a long succession of ideal and actual vicissitudes, only a few of the more prominent circumstances remain, like the brilliant spots on the summits of the highest hills, when the sun has withdrawn his beams from the rest of the creation.

How few and shadowy are the ideas which occur to the mind, on a review of any topic that has some time before engaged its curiosity! The greater part of most histories and narratives is perfectly useless, and never retained. The object attempted therefore should be compression, not amplification; and only those characters and incidents described that furnish the materials of enlarged and philosophic criticism. The mere accumulation of facts must in time lead to this result; for though a selection of the more picturesque traits may be applied to the purposes of romance or the drama, the only way in which the whole succession of events can be treated, will be something perhaps between the plan so admirably exemplified by Guizot, in his Lectures on European Civilisation, and the

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more copious method of Mr. Hallam, in his Constitutional History of England, which presents the spirit of the subject in a manner sufficiently instructive, if not the most captivating.

WE forget incalculably more of our own thoughts than those of others. What crowds of imagery, what varieties of scene and adventure, what unfathomable depths of feeling, are often compressed within the space of a few hours' sleep, yet with little more impression on awaking than is produced by colours on a landscape, or the passing of images over a mirror. Nothing so much convinces me of the boundlessness of the human mind as its operations in dreaming,-the phantasmagoria of thought stealing over the spirit as reminiscences of a former existence, or shadowings of the infinite and eternal.

TIME appears long or short chiefly according to the multiplicity or paucity of ideas that pass through the mind; a psychological fact which Addison has linked so finely with romance, in one of his charming oriental fables.* Something of the sort appears to have place in dreaming, where the rapidity of the mental operations is so great, that during a very short sleep, a person shall seem to himself to pass through several states of a varied existence. In that remarkable sensation called night-mare, which is seldom perhaps prolonged beyond a few seconds, we often fancy ourselves struggling with an interminable series of perplexities and embarrassments. One reason therefore why persons advanced in life concur in admitting its extreme brevity, is because they possess but few reminiscences of their past experience it is only the more prominent facts in their history that memory has preserved. The notion may be illustrated by the case of a traveller looking back on the extent of territory which he has traversed in his journey:

* The story of the Sultan of Egypt, Spectator, No. 94.